RSA was not the only contractor to suffer a major breach, warns Lockheed

Amidst a mix of public testimony and leaked intelligence reports suggesting persistent cyber attacks on U.S. institutions by Iranand China, the top supplier to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is issuing a strongly worded warning. Lockheed Martin Comp. (LMT), whose annual revenues eclipse $47B USD, warned Monday of a rising number of so-called "advanced persistent threats", noting that many of these sophisticated attacks were linked.

According to Chandra McMahon, Lockheed vice president and chief information security officer, her firm has been targeted by a number of serious attacks. She comments, "The number of campaigns has increased dramatically over the last several years. The pace has picked up."

All eyes are on Lockheed, after the company was selected to support the Pentagon's Cyber Crime Center (DC3), beating out previous contract holder General Dynamics Corp. (GD).

If you believe the gospel according to Lockheed, so to speak, the weakest part of the security chains at present are contractors. In a discussion Lockheed executives revealed that EMC Corp. (EMC) subsidiary RSA, makers of the titular cryptographic standard was only one of two major contractor breaches. Like RSA, the other contractor's info was used in an attempted second-wave attack on Lockheed.

Charlie Croom, Lockheed's vice president of cybersecurity solutions remarks, "Suppliers are still a huge problem... the adversary has been very significant and tenacious and has really been targeting the defense industrial base."

Lockheed says that some of biggest dangers come from so-called spear phishing attacks, tailor-made attacks which target a specific company and are designed to lure employees to malicious websites or to download from an email files containing malware. Lockheed also reports seeing a new wave off attacks over social media platforms.

The supplier says that it is aware of many potential cyber-spies creeping around its networks. It says it had been tracking the spies who hacked RSA for a few years. While the RSA information gave those parties a ticket to advance their efforts, Lockheed claims it ultimately stopped any significant data loss from occurring via in-house detection, monitoring, and network lockdown capabilities.

America is going to be hated because we're the top dog with the biggest stick on the block. Just like how the UK was hated for so long during colonial times because they were the top dog with the biggest stick. It will continue to whoever takes over as top dog in the next 100 years and has the next largest stick. In a world where you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't, the best bet is to say "fuck it" and do what you want. People can bitch and moan all they want, but honestly, who cares? Nobody.

Illegal wars? You do know that laws are subject to interpretation, and the winners decide the definition of right and wrong. If you choose to believe something is illegal, yet nobody is going to step up and prosecute in a court willing to hear it, then you're a fool. History is written by the victors, everything else is just sour grapes.

Any country can support any other country, that is their sovereign right. Russia can support Iran, USA can support Israel, China can support Syria, nobody really cares. Countries will support whoever or whatever is in their best interest.

You should find a new hobby, monday morning quarterbacking in international politics isn't your strong suit.

Just off the top of my head the reason why you are hated is because...Amercicans act like the world revolves around them, you guys devour the resources at an unsustainable and yet still refuse to cap carbon emissions(at a national level at least), care more about self interest than global interest but these things are petty in my view... personally i believe the main reason is because of your hypocrisy... its just mind bloggingly take Irsael for example as it was used before. Its an occupying force which breaks international law and the geneva convention, they denied the Palestinian's basic human rights and whats worse their dignity.. but fuck that its not in your interest and then you get on your high horse and spout human right abuses in some random country purely for self gain... or to make another exmaple Iran.. look at the pressure being put on them by the US and their lapdogs.. sorry i meant Allies.. Iran has signed NPT, has Irsael? Iran has no nukes and no proof has been found to show otherwise, Irsael has nukes.. but thats ok... different rules for different countries... I mean US foregin policy reeks to high heaven.

No country is perfect.. Just about every country on the planet has done some shocking things.. but the US just seems to not give a shit purely because it has the 'biggest stick'.

Finally your so right about interpretation of Law all you need to say is they are "unlawful combatants" and you can totally bypass the Geneva Convention as was done in 2002.. by guess who?